Ashes Of The Rejected

The wolves howled the moment her foot crossed the Ashveil border.

Not for welcome.

Not for warning.

For war.

Evangeline Blackthorn smiled, slow and sharp, as the sound rippled through the forest like a broken prayer. Trees whispered her name in the old tongue, the one the pack had long since forgotten—Vassira. Cursed daughter. Moon-blooded. Death-bringer.

How poetic, that they remembered it now.

The wind shifted. She could taste them in the air—sweat, steel, fear. They were close. Watching. Waiting. The fools still thought she might run.

Five years ago, she had.

Back then, she’d been barefoot and sobbing, stumbling through the woods with blood on her dress and betrayal in her lungs. She remembered the smell of fire from the ceremonial pyre behind her. She remembered the sound of Darius’s voice breaking as he screamed the rejection rite. She remembered Kade’s hand, firm on her back, as he shoved her past the border.

She remembered everything.

And Ashveil had forgotten what it meant to cross a Blackthorn and let her live.

A low growl split the silence behind her. Not a wolf. A man.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Evangeline didn’t turn. “And yet, here I am.”

The voice was unfamiliar gravel over stone but the intent was the same as it had always been. Keep her out. Keep her contained. Keep her forgotten.

She turned slowly, hood falling back to reveal the woman they thought had died in exile. Her hair spilt like ink down her back, a streak of silver flashing through the waves. Her eyes once wide and pleading glowed faintly under the moon, something old and starless stirring behind them.

The stranger stepped forward. A patrol wolf. Young. Brave. Stupid.

“The Alpha said if you ever returned”

“What?” she asked softly. “He’d kill me again?”

The wolf hesitated. She saw it in his eyes: the flicker of confusion, then fear. Because he knew, without knowing how, that she wasn’t like the other wolves. Whatever power clung to her skin now wasn’t something you could tear down with claws or silver.

She took a step closer. The shadows shifted with her.

“Go back,” she said. “Tell Darius I’ve come home.”

He didn’t move.

So she smiled. “Or stay. And let him find your bones.”

The boy ran. They always did.

She tilted her head to the sky as the moon broke free of the clouds, casting her in silver. She didn’t need to hunt the pack.

They would come to her.

One by one.

Because the curse was waking.

Because her blood sang to them still.

Because fate doesn’t break. It waits.

And Evangeline Blackthorn had waited long enough.

The forest held its breath.

Evangeline stood still for a moment longer, letting the hush wrap around her like a second skin. Even the night animals had gone quiet. Not out of respect.

Out of instinct.

They could feel it too the thrum of something ancient rising from beneath the soil, the heartbeat of old magic pulsing through the roots, calling to her. No… not calling.

Obeying.

Her fingers brushed against the nearest tree trunk, and the bark flinched under her touch. The shadows gathered at her feet like loyal hounds, coiling around her boots as if to mark their territory.

Mine, they whispered. Ours.

A rustle behind her. Softer than the boy’s arrival. Not a patrol this time. She didn’t turn. She didn’t need to. She already knew the scent of pine needles, steel, and regret.

“Kade,” she murmured.

He stepped into the clearing without a sound, as he always had lethal, controlled, and cold. His silver eyes caught the moonlight like a blade’s edge, and for a moment, she could almost pretend nothing had changed.

Except everything had.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said, voice like winter wind. “You’re not welcome here.”

Evangeline turned to face him fully now. Her eyes didn’t flinch. “Good. I didn’t come for a welcome.”

Silence stretched between them, taut and brittle. He hadn’t changed much same broad frame, same quiet intensity. But there were lines on his face now that hadn’t been there before. Shadows under his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights.

She wondered if any of them ever dreamed of her.

“You crossed the border,” he said after a moment. “That makes you a threat.”

Her smile was thin and sharp. “Was that what they told you to say, Kade? Or do you still come up with your threats when you’re not following orders like a good dog?”

His jaw twitched. “You were dangerous then. You’re more dangerous now.”

“And yet here I stand.”

She took a step forward. He didn’t move.

“You pushed me across the border yourself,” she said, voice lower now. “I begged you to let me explain. I begged you to believe me.”

“I wanted to believe you.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

His hands curled into fists at his sides. “Because I was afraid.”

The admission hung in the air like a confession to a god he no longer believed in.

“I was seventeen,” he said. “And you were… changing. You were glowing, and bleeding moonlight, and the elders were screaming about curses. About bloodlines. I didn’t know what to believe.”

“You believed Darius,” she said.

Kade flinched.

“And Ronan. And Lucien. And all the rest of them. But not me.”

She stepped closer. He didn’t back away, but he was trembling now—barely perceptible, but she saw it. Felt it in the air.

“I’m not here to ask forgiveness,” she said. “Not from you. Not from any of them.”

“Then why are you here?”

She studied his face. “Because the curse wasn’t about me, Kade. It was never just about me.”

Lightning cracked in the distance, faint and far away. The forest shuddered.

“A new prophecy has surfaced,” she said, voice like silk wrapping around a dagger. “Five wolves must protect the one they once betrayed, or the curse will consume them all.”

Kade’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

“You feel it already, don’t you?” she whispered. “The pull. The binding. The way your heart won’t stop racing when I look at you.”

He looked away.

Evangeline leaned in close, her breath brushing his ear.

“You don’t want to love me,” she said. “But you don’t have a choice.”

She turned and walked past him without waiting for a response. The shadows moved with her, loyal and silent.

Behind her, Kade didn’t follow.

Not yet.

But he would.

They all would.

Because the curse had woken.

And it had chosen her.

Darius Thorn had never been afraid of the dark.

He was born into it, raised by it, baptized in it under the blood-red moon the night his father died. Alpha by seventeen. Feared by eighteen. Mated by prophecy. Rejected by fate.

He’d survived war, blood feuds, assassination attempts.

But now, standing in the hollowed-out temple at the heart of Ashveil, surrounded by the whispering remnants of gods long dead, he felt something cold slither beneath his skin. Something ancient. Something wrong.

“She’s crossed the border.”

The Oracle’s voice echoed against stone, layered and strange.

Darius didn’t flinch. “I know.”

“She is not the same girl you cast out.”

“I know that, too.”

The Oracle—blind, veiled, old as the first pack—tilted her head. “Then why do your hands shake, Alpha?”

He clenched his fists. “They don’t.”

But they did. Just slightly. Just e